Coup? Inside the Bomas night of election drama

The night of August 14/15 was going to be the night of the long knives, except for a few things that went wrong. Everything that had been done during the day to take full charge of the tallying process had failed. Earlier in the day, IEBC Director of Operations Gideon Balang had been abducted at Bomas gates by unknown persons, and held incommunicado for nine hours, with abductors doing everything to extract any helpful information that could aid their motives. Before he was snatched away, chants of "Balang" had rent the auditorium. The day before, Benjamin Kimwei, another IEBC staff, was fished out of Bomas by Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, and tortured in a bid to disclose certain information that could enable State operatives take charge of the tallying process. On the same day at a top state officer's office in the city centre, all senior police officers who were directly involved in election management were paraded before their boss.

Here, the State officer had demanded a full report from the officers who were at the centre of behind-the-scenes operations at Bomas. He only wanted to hear one thing; that they had taken full charge of the situation and the process.